United Poultry Concerns is running this ad in 10 special editions of the University of Maryland student newspaper The Diamondback.

From March 3 through May 12, “Please Help Me - I am Suffering” targets an audience of 9,000 readers each time it appears. The total cost of
our Spring semester sequence of 10 ads is $10,265. We gratefully accept donations for this ad campaign aimed at University of Maryland students,
faculty & all campus affiliates. The University of Maryland receives a lot of funding from Perdue Farms. It’s important that the truth be
told about the horrible suffering and cruelty of “Perdue” chickens.

Ivy, the white chick in this photo being sheltered by her adopted mother Ruby, was saved from Perdue. Please stick up for chickens & let every
savior be YOU!

Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the misery of chickens on April 16 in The New York Times. “Animal Cruelty or the Price of
Dinner?” generated over 260 posted comments including three from United Poultry Concerns President Karen Davis:

In the slaughter plants, chickens, turkeys and ducks are subjected to electric shock water through which their faces are dragged, head down. The purpose is
to paralyze the muscles of their feather follicles after they are dead. They are NOT stunned, i.e., rendered unconscious or pain-free. This procedure
precedes their necks being partially cut by huge automatic blades after which they are moved to a bleed-out tunnel while alive and conscious, where they
hang for 90 seconds before being plunged into scald water tanks, dead and alive. The millions of chickens each year who are still alive when they enter the
scald tank struggle so violently that their eyes come out of the sockets and their bones break. They are put through all this agony after having been
forced to live in filth and darkness on crippled joints in bodies wracked with pain and diseases. I live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and see day after
day the baby chickens being trucked up and down the roads to slaughter. All they have ever known of being alive in the flesh is human cruelty, illness,
pain, and filth in all its forms.

Former Tyson chicken slaughter employee Virgil Butler wrote of his observations of the chickens he witnessed every day: "Every chicken is bled out while
still sentient. They hang there and look at you while they are bleeding. You can definitely tell they know what is going on. Sometimes if they are not
completely immobilized by the paralytic 'stunner' (which happens frequently), they will try to hide their head from you by sticking it under the wing of
the chicken next to them." Virgil Butler became a vegetarian when finally, speaking of himself and his partner Laura, "We just couldn't look at a piece of
meat anymore without seeing the sad, tortured face that was attached to it some time in the past."

There is a wealth of nourishing and delicious foods for us to choose that are animal-free. These foods include protein-rich chicken-like products that
replace any need for us to bring chickens or any other animals into the world merely to suffer and die for our appetites. We need to put slaughterhouses
behind us and welcome the culinary opportunities that beckon. Fortunately, more and more people are discovering these culinary opportunities and taking
advantage of them.

The Comments section is now closed but you can submit a 150-word letter to the editor of The New York Times (we did!) at www.nytimes.com.